


being brothers

by Anonymous



Category: Dream SMP + Affiliated Creators, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: A Concerning but Canon-Typical Amount of Pit-Fights, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Taken Seriously, Canon major character death: Wilbur Dies, Canon-Typical Violence, Family backstory, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Technoblade Hears Voices (Video Blogging RPF), Technoblade POV - Freeform, found-family-ing your actual family, minecraft world, sorry for the spoilers :/ but no one else dies, that will make sense I promise, the comfort comes in the second and third chapters though, this goes hard with the SBI family dynamic but also with the DSMP plotline so uhhh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:40:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28358697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: brotherhood is more than sharing a childhood home, and Techno and Tommy don’t have whatever that “more” is.A series of memories and scenes about Techno and Tommy.Rated Mature for non-graphic, canon-typical violence.
Relationships: Technoblade & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & TommyInnit & Phil Watson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 50
Collections: Anonymous





	being brothers

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this on a whim, and now it's several thousand words long. (I'm counting the next chapters, which are almost finished. See y'all like.. tomorrow? Maybe in a few days?)
> 
> This entire fic is just canon stuff taken too seriously mixed w/ SBI FD. It's understandable if you comment a link to the "Kids? Could we lighten up a little?" simpsons meme. 
> 
> The voices are greek-chorus-style. They'll chill out later on, but from the start they're nasty, and Do Not Like Tommy. 
> 
> Finally: For the first chapter, Techno and Tommy are Not On Good Terms, and it ends on a low note. Wait for Ch.2 if you need comfort after your hurt!

Techno and Wilbur had been "adopted" by Phil young, but not so young that Techno could forget meeting Tommy. Even 16 years later, Techno still remembers how Tommy had curled his tiny fingers around his hoof the first time they'd met. (Then his ears, and his hair, and anything he could conceivably try to rip off with his baby strength.)

He can still hear the low hum of the voices, reminding him how easily he could ruin this for himself and Wilbur- how quickly he could prove Phil's faith in them wrong. How fast he could snap his new baby brother's fingers. 

Techno didn't play with Tommy much after that. 

It didn't bother him. Tommy was so tiny that he wasn't fun to play with anyways, and Wil loved to dote on him from the moment they'd met. Phil thought Wilbur was too young to watch Tommy, but he couldn’t stop him. He'd met the same stubbornness that Techno had, back when Wilbur had found him and decided they were brothers. 

Plus, in hindsight, Techno's pretty sure he would've eventually needed to ask Wilbur for help if he hadn't offered. There weren't many people in their corner of the server, and none who wanted to be responsible for a baby or a monster. As much as Phil might've wanted to let them all be kids, he was one teen without any real adults nearby to help. In the span of a month, he'd acquired a baby, a 5-year-old piglin-hybrid, and an 8-year-old... Wilbur.   
There's only so much he could've done.

And that was before Techno had explained the voices (in vague details,) or baby Tommy had grown into _Tommy, Big Toddler who Yells_.

Techno sometimes told Phil what the voices said about him and Wilbur. He never told him when they got bloodthirsty, but he’d relay new information about the server, or compliments about Wil’s new sweater and Phil’s new hat. He never said anything about Tommy. Phil was smart. He could read between the lines.

The sheer stress of it all was probably why Techno had managed to worm his way onto hunting expeditions by the time he'd turned 10. Better to separate him and Tommy and leave less on Wilbur's plate, even if it meant Techno had been drinking potions years before his bones stopped growing. (At least that had no confirmed health side effects, unlike leaving all three of the Minecraft sons without parental supervision for a week)

Looking back, it was obvious how things shook out the way they did. They'd never been inevitable, but the momentum started early. Wilbur watched Tommy. Phil taught Techno to hunt. Then they'd all live together for a month, and between hunting trips, Techno would try to avoid his increasingly annoying and terrifyingly fragile baby brother. Sometimes they'd all work in the fields together, sometimes they'd travel to the markets, but Techno didn't spend time 1-on-1 with Tommy if he could help it.

It wasn't weird. Tommy was lame. And, once he was old enough to know how, mean. (He'd learned to talk from Wilbur, who could carry Tommy on his shoulders and talk a week's worth of food out of a booth for a quarter the price.) Tommy found his weak spots, the things he felt guilty or scared about, and dug in hard. 

The voices hated him. 

Techno started learning to fight when he was 12. At first- when Phil was busy and the cellar was free- alone. It'd lasted for a few months before Wilbur had found him and tattled, and Phil started teaching them both how to handle a sword while Tommy slept. 

Wilbur played along for a week, but the way his palms were callusing put him off. Techno was glad he didn't have human hands for the first time, it was almost as if his body was built better for this. It probably was. His hooves had just enough dexterity to grip tight and lock. Phil had told him about the piglins in the nether who could hold onto a sword until they were nothing but bones. 

He was 14 when he snuck off to his first fight- underground, him and some slightly older teen. He'd worried about the respawns in the unverified server, but the worst-case scenario was that he simply couldn't return if he lost. The rules were technically fight-until-surrender, but Techno had heard enough about underground fights to know better. 

The voices were vibrating, high-pitched and constant and then quiet. 

Phil found him cleaning his axe. Techno suddenly had a lot more chores when he wasn't hunting. 

Once Phil trusted him again, he didn't force things back to normal- not when Techno had finally broken down and explained what the voices _wanted_ -and how they’d changed after he'd won. He'd started taking Techno to real fights instead. Moderated, safe, and with no actual murder until he turned 18.

The voices didn't like it as much, but to him, it was everything. He woke up and ate, trained, ate, trained, ate again, trained again, then slept. When Phil or Wilbur needed help around the house, he found time out of his sleep schedule if he could swing it.  
There was an energy behind him that he couldn't explain; nothing had ever come easily before this. He could swing an axe at a stationary target for hours and think exclusively about how much damage slanting his axe might do, or whether he could switch to his shield fast enough to get in if his enemy might strike back. It was hard to stop when fighting felt more restful.

By the time he was 16, Technoblade was a legend, if he could say so himself. It was weird, being the age Phil was when he'd found them. 

With the perspective that Wil was older than Philza had been, it seemed normal for him to be taking care of an 11-year-old Tommy while Phil and he traveled to tournaments.

That wasn't completely true, or fair to Phil- he traveled home more often than Techno. He was at their farm just as much as he wasn't. Techno was the one who really left. He slept in his own bed twice a week when he was feeling particularly homesick. 

It was better. Techno liked the farm. He liked the methodical, rhythmic planting season. He liked pulling up tubers and cutting down wheat. He liked setting traps. Keeping his family fed. But his winnings had bought luxuries they couldn’t afford before, which was even better. He could use bleach instead of bone ash to lighten his hair. Wil had a new guitar. Tommy had more than 4 shirts- not that anyone could tell. Phil had even been able to pay for the membranes he needed to repair his old Elytra. 

It was different. Lonely sometimes. But Techno would always be Wilbur's brother, ever since they'd found each other, alone. Wilbur was the first one who had ever looked at Techno and said he'd belonged somewhere. Phil would obviously always be his dad, in a way that Techno refused to put into words.

And Tommy? Tommy was his kid brother. He was growing so fast that sometimes Techno barely recognized him when he visited, and he was always annoying, but that's how kids could be. That was Tommy. 

It didn't bother him.

\---

Techno got letters from Wilbur and Phil once he moved closer to his new home arena. Phil kept him updated on the farm, and the horses. He'd corralled dozens of pigs and put saddles on them, apparently because Wilbur had been complaining about his saddle-hoarding problem. He'd even caught some hoglins and named one after Techno. 

Wilbur always included bits of new songs, even though Techno didn't know how to read music. He'd talk about Tommy a lot, too- the only way Techno kept up to date between his visits home.   
He'd known before going home for the winter that Tommy had convinced Phil to train him, and Wilbur had warned him. 

'He's going to want to fight you. He keeps talking about it, but he's only been learning for a few weeks. Go easy on him?'

It hurt that Wil thought he'd beat up their younger brother. Especially given ... everything. Even if no one knew why he was so careful around him. But after getting home?

Tommy ambushed him with a wooden stick before he could even unpack. Within a minute, Techno had knocked Tommy to the ground- he hadn't meant to be so harsh, but he hoped it'd give Tommy a good idea of how much room he had to improve. 

Instead, once Tommy had pushed himself off the ground, he'd charged Techno again. Techno slid to the side, then stuck a hind leg out to trip him. 

"Fight me, fucker!" 

"You're lying on the ground. And 12. You can't say fuck, yet."

"I'm 13 and I'm gonna beat your pigass!"

_“kill him. home world. canon death.”  
_ _“how is this kid related to technoblade?”  
_ _“he’s adopted.”_

Techno had never been so glad to leave the farm that spring.

\---

Wilbur wrote less and less over the years. In the first letter following his 20th birthday, Phil told him both his brothers had moved away. They'd been invited to join a settler's caravan due to their expertise homesteading, and Wil had finally indulged his wanderlust. Tommy had either followed or talked him into leaving in the first place.

Come spring, Phil didn't replant the farm. There were still 3 winters worth of preserves left. When Techno visited, they traveled- briefly striking out an autonomous empire in a server they were barely welcome in. Amid the flames and ice, he wondered who Phil could've been if he'd been able to do whatever the hell he'd wanted when he was 16.

Maybe he had.

The last 4 years suddenly seemed longer. 

\---

He gets a letter from Wilbur. He packs his things and leaves the next morning. 

\---

16 seems young, but Techno had fought younger. Techno had died younger.

\---

_"finally, finally, finally"  
_ _"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD"  
_ _"fight club pog"  
_ _"Technoblade NEVER DIES"_

Tommy is wiping the blood off his face on the floor of Wilbur’s pit when things shift into the place they'd been heading for years. 

"You aren't my brother." 

And he turns around, grabs Tubbo's outstretched hand so he and Niki can pull Tommy out of the pit, and limps away. 

Techno's never seen Tommy retreat, even when he's beaten. 

Wilbur is laughing. The voices are quiet for a moment, like they've just watched Techno take his first kill with his dad's old axe, and he can hear his pulse racing in his ears. The worst part is that he knows it's only from the adrenaline. 

_"holy shit, did tommy just disown the blade?"  
_

He thinks he should be sad. Maybe angry? Instead, he wipes his hands on a bit of clean dirt, then hoists himself out of the pit. There's still a lot of daylight left, and lots of things need to be done before Wilbur can take on Manberg again.

**Author's Note:**

> the “you aren’t my brother” thing has nothing to do with them being adopted- it’s abt the difference between just being related by law, and calling a friend your brother because you care about them that deeply. Yes, i am projecting.
> 
> balancing a minecraft world where there's magic potions and vague industrialization but no artificial dyes and people still live in the woods??? I have reasons for my choices. Even if those reasons are just.. I found the lines about Techno using lye to bleach his hair, and Tommy's shirts all looking the same funny enough to keep in, even if together they make the world weirdly complex. they both go to incredible lengths for branding choices, they're brothers your honor
> 
> crit is fine, but b cool + have reasonable expectations! I'm an amatuer and I'm doing my best :]
> 
> ALSO! I sometimes comment on fics anonymously as pbo, so, uh, if you've got a commenter called pbo, that's probably me! y'all wrote so many incredible stories that my brain won't stop thinking abt blocks


End file.
